In electrostatography, for example xerography, electrophotographic imaging or electrostatographic imaging, an imaging process includes forming a visible toner image on a support surface such as a paper sheet, plastics, films, etc. The visible toner image is often produced by forming a latent electrostatic image on a photoreceptor, which can be transferred to an intermediate transfer belt, and then fixed onto the support surface using a heated fuser belt or a heated roll fuser to form a permanent image.
Roll fusers can be heated to a higher temperature than a fuser belt, and can provide high speed, high throughput, and a high-quality image on the support surface. However, roll fusers require an initial warm-up time and therefore do not provide an instant-on printer. Fuser belts for image fixing are heated to a lower temperature than roll fusers and can provide an instant-on printer with lower energy consumption. However, they generally result in a lower speed than a printer having a roll fuser. Fuser belt materials typically include high-performance engineering polymers such as polyimide and polyimide copolymers. Polymers, however, can also suffer from high heat capacity and low thermal conductivity which can result in the fuser belt storing thermal energy rather than transferring it to the toner and the support surface during image fixing.
Thus, there is a need to overcome the problems associated with fuser belts.